


Ray Molina's Home for Wayward Musicians

by avatays



Series: Ray Molina's Home for Wayward Musicians [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Absent Parents, After the Orpheum Performance, Episode: s01e09 Stand Tall, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Ghost Reveal, Ghosts, Himbo Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst(tm), M/M, Ray Finds Out, Ray-centric, Reggie Peters-centric (Julie and The Phantoms), Some Humor, best boi reggie peters, carlos deciding that reggie is his brother now, family by choice, ghosts that are less ghosty than you'd think, i just love reggie adopting himself into the molina family, that wasn't a tag but it should be, the first part of many, this is basically just the set-up there's MORE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28786758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avatays/pseuds/avatays
Summary: Ray prides himself on being a pretty accepting father, if he and his kids have anything to say about it. He’s used to being a pseudo-dad for anyone that may need a paternal figure.He didn’t expect that to extend to a bunch of ghosts that have been existing in his house for weeks.OR:Julie and the boys didn’t realize that when Julie was able to touch them for the first time after their performance at the Orpheum, it extended to make them tangible for people other than Julie as well. Ray finds this out first hand.
Relationships: Alex Mercer & Julie Molina & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Alex Mercer & Julie Molina & Ray Molina & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Carlos Molina & Reggie Peters, Ray Molina & Reggie Peters
Series: Ray Molina's Home for Wayward Musicians [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110518
Comments: 11
Kudos: 217





	Ray Molina's Home for Wayward Musicians

Ray Molina was a pretty good dad, if he does say so himself. 

He’s been a pseudo-father for plenty of Carlos’s and Julie’s friends when they needed it, and he can’t count the number of times Flynn had fought with a family member and she had crashed in their guest room. Even Carrie used to spend a lot of nights here back before she and Julie had a falling out. As much as he liked Trevor, Carrie had said plenty of times that he wasn’t there a lot, so she would come to the Molina’s instead of to a huge empty house. He couldn’t blame her. Carrie was his wife’s goddaughter, and she was always welcome, even now.

The day after the performance at the Orpheum, he woke up and heard sounds like cabinets and drawers opening downstairs. He smiled a bit to himself. It sounded like Carlos was trying to make breakfast again. After Julie had come back in from the studio last night, she and Carlos had stayed up for a while to talk. It wasn’t his place to listen in, but just seeing them huddled on Julie’s bed together talking for hours reminded him so much of when Rose would read them stories back when they were far younger than they were now. 

He walked down the stairs, and the noises in the kitchen dwindled. He turned the corner— 

And stopped in his tracks.

There was a member of Julie’s band in his kitchen.

He didn’t think they were even in the United States, from what he gleaned from Julie’s explanation of how the holograms worked. He had black hair and was wearing a red flannel, and he was scribbling something down on a piece of paper — presumably what he had been looking for when he had heard the noise. The cap of the pen was clenched between his teeth as he wrote, and he wore a look of concentration on his face, as if to make sure he didn’t lose his train of thought.

Was this the bassist? He knew Julie had told him their names before but it’s not like they’d ever been introduced— 

The boy looked up. “Morning, Ray!” He said cheerfully (although the words were slightly muffled) before he returned to his writing.

“Hi. You’re from Julie’s band, right?” Ray replied. 

The boy froze. His eyes widened when he looked back up at Ray. His jaw dropped slightly, and the pen cap fell from his lips. His head swiveled to look behind him so quickly it looked like it hurt. When he realized there was no one else there, he turned back to Ray, looking varying degrees of confused and worried. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name,” Ray admitted. “I’m Ray, Julie’s dad — seems you knew that already though.”

The boy opened his mouth and closed it, seeming to gather his thoughts, before he finally said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “You can see me?”

Alright. Weird question. He thought Julie said they were from somewhere in Europe, maybe it was a translation error — but then again, the boy didn’t seem to have an accent at all. He both sounded and looked like a stereotypical American teenager — as a matter of fact, he looked a lot like how Ray himself had dressed during his college days, before he met Rose.

“Yes,” Ray eventually answered. “Should I... not be able to?”

The boy shook his head slowly, as if in bewilderment. Weird. 

“What’s your name?” Ray eventually asked, walking closer into the kitchen. 

Silence. It was almost deafening. Ray spared a glance at the kid as he started making his morning coffee, and the kid looked more than a little confused. He had a look on his face like the wheels were turning quick in his head but he hadn’t actually processed what was happening yet.

“Reggie,” he said after a long pause.

“Well, Reggie, what are you doing here?” He asked gently. “I was under the impression that you weren’t from here, you were live-streamed from another location or whatever it is you kids do to make the holograms.”

“No. I’ve been in LA my entire life... probably will be after, too,” Reggie said. He smiled a bit, seeming to get more comfortable. Ray could practically see his shoulders start to relax.

“Hm. Well, glad you’re here. Wish Julie would’ve given me a heads up that you guys would be coming, I could’ve gotten the guest rooms ready.”

“We sleep in the studio,” Reggie told him, before hoisting himself up on the counter to let his legs dangle.

“Oh, just using the pull out?” Ray asked. “That can’t be too comfortable for the three of you.” 

“We’ve lived there before.” Reggie stiffened, like he had said something he shouldn’t have.

“...Um. Right,” Ray said after a moment. “How long have you guys been out there?”

Reggie opened his mouth to answer, but seemed to think better of it, before eventually, “Uh... where’s Julie?”

Ray smirked. “Alright, don’t tell me. I’ll ask Julie when she wakes up.”

Reggie nodded. “That’d be for the best.”

“Can I make you some breakfast?” Ray asked as he got some eggs and sausages out of the fridge. 

Reggie grinned wide. The smile was so big and excited, it made him look closer to Carlos’s age than Julie’s. “Yes please!”

“Coming right up,” Ray said easily. “Any preference on how they’re cooked?”

Reggie shrugged. “Just make ‘em the way you always do, Ray.”

Ray smiled lightly. “You got it, kid.”

They talked for a little while as Ray cooked. It became clear that the kid was uncomfortable answering questions about where he was from and his family — “the band is my family,” was all he said when Ray asked, and Ray sensed he should drop it — but when they got onto the topic of music, Reggie opened up. Ray got to talk about his wife’s band a bit, Reggie made him promise to find some of their music so he could listen to it, and Reggie told him how he got into music, and even revealed that he wanted to make a country album that does “surprisingly well” once they release a few albums first.

“I’m teaching myself to play the banjo,” Reggie told him excitedly as Ray put some sausages in the pan to cook as well. “Luke says it’s lame, but I think he’ll warm up to it once I get better.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great,” Ray assured him, and Reggie smiled.

Ray turned back to the eggs as he put them into two plates and dropped a few sausage links beside them. He put the plate in front of Reggie as the boy sat on a chair at the counter. Reggie looked at them hesitantly, before finally eating. He paused after the first bite, before he grinned and kept going.

Ray smiled. What a weird kid... he was really growing on him.

———

Reggie was aware he was eating like he hadn’t been fed in years — which he hadn’t, if you forget about the Hollywood Ghost Club. He was just shocked the food didn’t go through him, quite literally, like it had the few times he had tried to eat once coming back to the land of the living. 

“Good?” Ray asked with a laugh. 

Reggie nodded. “ _So_ good.”

Reggie heard quick footsteps coming down the stairs, and saw Carlos. 

“Hey, bud,” Ray said. “Got some breakfast for you. Julie awake yet? Oh, have you been introduced to Reggie?”

Carlos was staring. He pointed at Reggie, who waved and gave him a closed smile with a mouth full of food. “But... how?” Carlos said.

Reggie suddenly remembered that Carlos knew about them; or at least, he knew enough to know that he shouldn’t be able to see them without the music coming along with it. He wasn’t sure how much Julie had told him, but Carlos clearly knew they were ghosts if what he said before the Orpheum was anything to go by. 

Carlos was a smart kid, Reggie had observed him enough to know that. He shouldn’t be surprised he figured them out so quick. He assumed Ray was probably in denial. Then again, kids were always much quicker to believe in the supernatural than rational adults were.

Reggie cleared his throat. “Um, good question. We’re... visiting.”

Carlos’s eyes darted between Reggie and his father, before his eyes widened and he said slowly, “Yeeeaaaah, of course. I think Julie mentioned everyone coming by to celebrate playing the Orpheum.”

Ray’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Really? I didn’t know about that.”

Carlos shrugged. “Maybe you forgot in your old age.”

Ray rolled his eyes and turned back to his food, and Carlos gave an over-exaggerated wink in Reggie’s direction. Reggie gave him a thumbs up. Seems like with both Carlos and Julie to back up their story, Ray would let it go—

He heard the familiar sound of one of his bandmates popping in. “Reggie, what are you doing?” Luke asked, gesturing at the fact that he was eating food. 

Ray jumped from his seat, standing up and making the chair fall, clattering loudly to the ground.

Luke frowned and said to Reggie, “What’s his deal?”

Carlos sighed and Reggie coughed. “Uh, Luke... they can see us now.”

Luke’s jaw dropped. “They... are you sure?”

“Pretty sure,” Carlos answered, sitting the chair by his father’s legs upright again. 

“Oh, fu—”

“What was that noise?” Julie’s voice said from behind them all. She stood on the stairs in the same fuzzy slippers she was wearing when she first met them in the studio. Her eyes darted to Luke and Reggie’s worried faces, before settling on her dad. 

Ray was taking deep breaths, before he gestured towards Luke. “You...” His eyes flickered to Reggie next to him, who was looking like a kicked puppy. “And you...” He turned to Julie with a frown. “Oh, _you_ have some explaining to do.”

———

After they had explained everything, Ray just sat there, head in his hands, trying to process. 

“Are you mad?” Julie asked softly after her father was silent for too long. 

Ray cleared his throat. “I just... need a minute.” He looked at Reggie next to him on the couch, then to Luke and Alex, who Luke had gotten when it was their turn to explain what happened. His eyes met Reggie’s again, who was looking apologetic, and almost scared again, like when he first noticed Ray was there this morning. “So... not holograms? It’s always been a ghost band?”

Reggie scratched at the back of his neck as Julie answered, “Yeah. I didn’t think I could tell you that though. It’s weird enough for me. I figured you’d just send me back to therapy.”

“I guess you have good reason to think that,” Ray sighed. “I still wish you would’ve said something though.”

“Would you have believed me?” Julie countered gently. “You didn’t even really believe Carlos with the ghost chef thing, you just wanted to try a new french dip.”

“Hey!” Carlos butted in. “It was _delicious_.”

Luke popped out and back in within a second, coming back holding something. He handed Ray a CD.

Ray stared at the cover, and immediately recognized all four members. “Huh.” He looked at the members in front of him. “Trevor must’ve given it to your mother at some point,” he said to Julie. 

Julie groaned. “Don’t bring Uncle Trevor up in front of them, Dad.” She paused. “Wait, so you _do_ recognize Trevor as Bobby?”

Ray nodded. “He and your mother were good friends. He made Rose his child’s godmother, _yes,_ I knew his real name. Besides, Bobby wasn’t much older than this when I first met him, I remember what he looked like.”

“Rose,” Reggie said thoughtfully. “Why does that sound familiar?”

Ray opened the cover and gestured to the insert facing the CD. “He signed it for her.”

Reggie stared at the inscription, his eyes flickering over the words. “‘To the best bartender at the Orpheum. Bobby.’”

Luke’s eyes widened. “Wait, your mom worked at the Orpheum?”

Alex caught on and immediately lost it. “Dude, you flirted with Julie’s mom!” He said through a high-pitched laugh.

“Wh-what?” Julie squeaked out, her face red.

Luke hit him in the chest. “Shut up, we all did!” He paused when Alex raised an eyebrow at him. “Fine, not you, but don’t just say it to _me_! Reggie and Bobby struck out too!”

“I stand by it,” Reggie said. “Jules, your mom was really cool.” Julie pulled a face and he laughed. 

“Seriously, guys? My mom?” She groaned.

“Guess Bobby signed the demo we gave her before we died,” Alex added.

“Don’t ignore me when I’m having a crisis!” Julie shouted. “I just found out you guys had a thing for _my mom_!”

“If it makes you feel a little better, we died like right afterwards,” Reggie said. She glared at him, but he could've sworn he heard a mumbled “it does, actually.”

Ray shifted his attention back to the boys. “I didn’t know you were his band. He never wanted to talk about it when it was brought up. Rose just told me she met him the night of an accident and that she was there to be a friend for him.”

Luke flopped down in a chair with his arms crossed. “Yeah, I’m sure he was heartbroken. So heartbroken that he stole all our songs.”

“Not... _all_ of them,” Julie corrected. 

Luke’s eyes softened. “Yeah. Not all. Guess even he had his limits.”

“How did this happen?” Ray asked. “If what you said was true, that they were only visible when they played with you, then what changed in the past twenty-four hours?”

“We’re not sure,” Luke told him. “We thought we were goners, then Julie was able to hug me.”

“It took us a second to realize she didn’t go right through him,” Alex added. “Working theory is that we formed a connection to Julie like we did with our instruments. When we first realized people could hear us play even if they couldn’t see us, Luke said it was like our instruments were attached to our souls. I think we formed that same bond with Julie, so that made it we could actually touch her. Still no clue how that touch managed to get rid of Covington’s stamp though.” 

“Or how it made us tangible,” Luke continued.

“Well... are other people able to touch you?” Ray asked. 

Luke scoffed, “Pfft, are other people able to touch us.” Then he paused. “Huh, I guess we haven’t tried it yet actually.”

Carlos jumped at the chance to touch a ghost. “Reggie, catch me!” He shouted as he lunged for the boy on the couch. 

“Wait, no—!”

Reggie grunted as Carlos jumped on top of him, landing hard on his lap. Carlos touched his flannel and smiled at him. 

“Yep,” Reggie huffed out. “Other people can touch us.”

“It sounds like you’re human again,” Ray said hesitantly. “What things can humans do that you can’t now?”

“We thought we couldn’t eat anything at all,” Reggie said as Carlos crawled over to sit between Reggie and his father. “Was pretty surprised when I could this morning.”

“Maybe you can only eat when you’re corporeal,” Julie guessed.

There was a long pause. “But then how do we go intangible again?” Luke asked. “I was — I mean... I have something to do later. I can’t do it with a human body that can’t go invisible.”

“Maybe try to focus on it?” Julie recommended. “Like when you were first learning how to pick things up.”

Reggie stood up and tried to focus. His mind had a habit of wandering, so it was hard, but eventually he opened his eyes. “Can you see me still?”

“Yeah,” Carlos said as Ray nodded. 

“Carlos, try and run through me, maybe I am intangible but just you guys can still see me.”

“Reg—”

Carlos cut his sister off by jumping off the couch and running at Reggie. Reggie tried to stay focused on being invisible and untouchable, when he felt Carlos collide with him.

Maybe he should have focused more on standing firm than being untouchable, because Carlos hit him and Reggie fell backwards, Carlos tumbling down with him.

Carlos laughed feverishly. Reggie couldn’t help but laugh along. Ray grinned as they untangled themselves and sat down on the floor. For as much as Carlos had complained as a kid that he wanted a brother, it seemed fate had a way of working itself out, and he got one after all.

“I’ll try it,” Alex said. He seemed better at it than Reggie, because Ray gasped and Carlos clapped after a moment. Alex asked, “Am I gone?” 

“Can’t see you,” Carlos said. “Try and touch me. I wanna see what it feels like when a ghost touches you.”

Alex rolled his eyes but smiled fondly at the boy, and came over to Carlos anyways and reached out to touch his arm — when it went right through him.

Carlos shivered. “That felt kinda weird.” 

Alex changed back before their eyes, sitting back down. “That was harder than focusing on picking things up.”

“Just needs practice, like everything else,” Luke said confidently. “Besides, we still can pop in and out of places when we’re tangible.”

“That actually means you need to be more careful,” Julie told them sternly. “If someone sees a human body teleporting in front of them, you guys are busted.”

There was a beat of silence, before Reggie said, “So... now what?” Luke leaned over and hit him on the arm. “What?! It’s a good question!”

Ray turned to him. “Why did you say hi to me? If you didn’t know I could see you, I mean.”

“I always say hi to you and Carlos,” Reggie said simply. “Oh, and Aunt Victoria but I don’t think she likes ghosts much so I don’t do things for her like everyone else.”

“What do you mean ‘do things’?” Carlos asked, sitting up straighter. 

“You guys lose things a lot. I find things.” Reggie shrugged.

Ray stared, before his eyes widened, saying, “My keys. I always lose them, but when I’m about to give up, they’re back where they usually are.”

“I always find them in your room, actually,” Reggie told him. “I think you need to check your pockets before you go upstairs from now on.”

Ray couldn’t help it. He laughed. Hard. When he finally stopped, he said, “This whole time I thought it was Rose! Ever since Carlos brought up the ghost chef.”

Julie’s face fell. “...The guys haven’t seen her. Mom’s not here.”

Ray stopped laughing. Carlos frowned and went quiet for a minute. “Isn’t that good?” Carlos eventually asked. “Don’t ghosts only get stuck when they have unfinished business?”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “We thought our unfinished business was playing the Orpheum, but... I guess it wasn’t.”

“If Mom isn’t stuck, then that means she moved on... right?” Carlos asked, eyes wide. 

Ray ruffled his hair. “That’s right, bud. I’m sure she can still see us, but she’s somewhere better, waiting for us.”

Julie gave a pained smile. “Yeah. I think so too.”

Ray reached out and squeezed her hand. She did it back. 

“Alex,” Carlos began. “You seem smart—”

Luke let out a barking laugh of “HA!” and Alex glared at him, but looked back at Carlos encouragingly.

“Can you help me with my homework? It’s math and Dad’s awful with numbers.” Carlos pondered for a second. “So is Julie.”

Luke quirked an eyebrow. “I’m not sure how much we can help you, we all died before we graduated high school. We haven’t done math since the nineties.”

“Don’t you guys think you should finish school?” Ray asked.

“Well if you want to give us fake identities and send us off to school, you can do that,” Luke responded. “But if you try to use our actual identities, we’ll be showing up as three guys who died twenty-five years ago.”

Ray frowned. “It’s unfortunate that you didn’t get to finish school.”

“All of us had run away from home,” Alex said quietly. “We were living out in that studio for most of our last year. We didn’t even go to school a lot.” He paused. “I kind of miss it. Just having a routine, instead of waking up and not knowing what’s going to happen most days.”

“What made you guys leave home so young?” Ray asked. The second he said it, he knew he had overstepped. Luke’s face was drawn, and in an instant, he disappeared from the room. “I didn’t mean to make him upset. Did he leave or did he just decide he was done talking to me?”

“He left,” Julie told him. “He doesn’t like to talk about it. He probably went to... do what he planned to do earlier.”

“Right,” Ray said. He sensed there was definitely more to that story, but he wasn’t going to pry when Luke clearly wasn’t ready to discuss it. He turned to Alex and Reggie. “I’m sorry, you don’t need to tell me anything.”

“It’s okay,” Reggie answered quietly, picking at a loose string on his flannel like he was afraid to make eye contact with anyone. “I don’t know where my family is, but I probably wouldn't want to see them anyways. My parents were always fighting, and my older brother left and didn’t turn back when he graduated. Maybe I’d want to find him but... my dad wasn’t a good person, and my mom was never really there, and when she was, they just fought and threw things. I don’t even think they really looked for me when I left.”

“Reg...” Julie whispered. She went to sit next to him, and he held her hand as he stared at the carpet. Alex mirrored her movement. Alex didn’t say anything. No one did. 

Eventually, Reggie cleared his throat and stood. “I think I’m gonna get some air. Use my new tangible body to do something fun. Maybe pretend I’m going to buy something at the mall, bump into a mannequin, who knows.”

“Want company?” Alex said.

Reggie nodded, and the two disappeared with a little flash the same way Luke did.

“Feels like I messed that up pretty bad,” Ray let out bitterly.

Julie shook her head. “It’s not your fault. There’s a reason why they didn’t graduate, why they don’t want to see their families. The only missing person report I could find from the year the three of them disappeared was for Luke. I don’t think Alex and Reggie’s parents wanted to find them.” Julie teared up a little. “Reggie always likes to hang around you guys. I don’t know why for sure, but he always had such a bad relationship with his family, especially his dad. I think he likes hanging out with a dad who didn’t seem to hate being around him — even if you didn’t know he was there.”

Ray’s heart broke for those kids. “Is there anything I can do? I don’t know if they want to move on, or if they want to stay here...”

“I don’t know either,” Julie said. “I know I don’t want them to leave yet. I don’t think they’re ready either.” Julie let out a soft laugh. “Maybe school would be good for them — Alex especially, he really does need a routine.”

“I’ll look into it.” Ray paused. “But Jules, they can be seen, they eat and sleep... are they alive again?”

Julie shook her head. “Still no heartbeat, still no need to breathe. But they’re alive in the ways that count. To me, at least.”

Ray could argue that breathing and a working heart would be pretty essential to the whole clause of ‘being alive’ but he understood what she meant. “Maybe we can give them some semblance of normalcy. No matter what they decide to do, while they’re living — uh, existing? — under my roof, they can do what will make them happy. If that includes having to give them some fake names, I’ll do it.”

Julie looked up at him with shimmering eyes. “You would do that?”

“Yeah. Come on, Jules, it’s not hard to get fake identification, just change their last names and dates of birth and it’ll be fine.”

She smiled. “I think they’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first part of this series of connected one-shots, i'm looking forward to doing this, as i've been having writer's block for a while and this show has helped me get out of my funk. i'm excited for you guys to read this, and i hope you enjoy this series!!  
> please tell me what you think if you feel so inclined, or even if you have a trope or idea you want included!  
> \- tay  
> [tumblr](https://stupidbihours.tumblr.com/) [instagram](https://instagram.com/avat.ays?igshid=6uisvzs480ld) [tiktok](https://www.tiktok.com/@avatays)  
> 


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